Jarome Iginla is the Flames’ all-time scoring leader and did everything short of winning a Stanley Cup in Calgary, coming up one win shy in the Finals in 2004. And in return for a future Hall of Famer, the face of his franchise, general manager Jay Feaster got zero professional hockey players in a trade with the Pittsburgh Penguins.

In the wee hours of Thursday morning on the East Coast, after widespread reports said Feaster had traded Iginla to the Boston Bruins for NHL-ready Alex Khokhlachev, Matt Bartkowski and a conditional first-round pick in 2013, the hockey world wound up stunned to learn that the actual trade was Iginla to the Penguins for the rights to two college players—Yale’s Kenneth Agostino and St. Cloud State’s Ben Hanowski, along with a first-round pick this year. At least the pick wasn’t conditional.

Flames general manager Jay Feaster tries to explain what he was doing in the Jarome Iginla trade. (AP Photo/Canadian Press)

In the past four days, Ray Shero has managed to add Iginla, Brenden Morrow, and Douglas Murray to the leaders of the Eastern Conference, without surrendering a single player off the Penguins’ roster. Pittsburgh is in the midst of a 13-game winning streak, and keeps looking to improve. The Flames have won 13 games all season, and are pinning their hopes for their biggest trade in years on two players whom Hockey Prospectus ranked outside the Penguins’ top 15 prospects last September.

Agostino and Hanowski may well end up being solid pros, but then, so were Doug Flynn, Steve Henderson, Dan Norman and Pat Zachry. OK, those aren’t hockey names, but they are the four men who came to the New York Mets in exchange for Tom Seaver in a 1977 trade with the Cincinnati Reds. The Mets then proceeded to enter the worst era in their history, emerging only when they hired Frank Cashen as general manager and embarked on a serious rebuilding project.

That is something Feaster has shown zero interest in doing until now. In a hastily arranged press conference to announce Iginla’s trade, Feaster said, “We want to bring more young assets into the organization. … I think we’re going to be busy (leading up to the trade deadline).”

That should actually scare the bejeezus out of Flames fans, because the man who expects to be busy over the coming week is the same man who just traded the best player on his team, and his best trade chip, for two college players and a draft pick almost certain to be outside the top 25. It’s the same Jay Feaster who signed Ryan O’Reilly to an offer sheet last month, blissfully unaware that had the Colorado Avalanche not matched the offer, the Flames would have lost O’Reilly on waivers. It’s the same Jay Feaster who, last summer, prior to a lockout in which his team’s owner played a huge role, signed Dennis Wideman to a five-year, $26.25 million deal. It’s the same Jay Feaster who passed up the chance to claim Brian McGrattan on waivers one day, then traded for him the next.

It’s the same Jay Feaster who could have and should have started a rebuild sooner, and started by trading Iginla when his value was higher than two college players and one of the last picks of the first round.